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Usefulness Quotes

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Usefulness Quotes

“As many people are in turmoil, they happen to put many substantial questions. By incessantly asking themselves what it means "to be essential," they start wondering whether "usefulness" has a key function in their life. It is true; many people can only survive through necessary and useful effects. But can we dispel "unusefulness" as worthless? For some, art and play may be “useless” but, yet, are fundamental ways and means for survival. ("Corporeal prison")”

ArtPlaySurvivalUsefulnessTurmoilEssentialCorporeal PrisonUnusefulnessWorhtless
Author:Erik Pevernagie
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“People who understand how to convert their time into useful products do not complain of boredom. They have too many important tasks to accomplish that they can hardly get bored.”

PeopleWorldLifePurposeTimeHumanityUnderstandingWorkWealthPovertyGreatnessProduceCallingWasteTasksValueProductivityConversionGiftBoredomGreatProductConvertComplaintsAccomplishmentsUsefulnessTime Conversion
Book:How To Become Great Through Time Conversion: Are you wasting time, spending time or investing time?
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“Good human work honors God's work. Good work uses no thing without respect, both for what it is in itself and for its origin. It uses neither tool nor material that it does not respect and that it does not love. It honors nature as a great mystery and power, as an indispensable teacher, and as the inescapable judge of all work of human hands. It does not dissociate life and work, or pleasure and work, or love and work, or usefulness and beauty. To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for. This is blasphemy: to make shoddy work of the work of God. But such blasphemy is not possible when the entire Creation is understood as holy and when the works of God are understood as embodying and thus revealing His spirit. (pg. 312, Christianity and the Survival of Creation)”

GodNatureWorkBeautyCreationRespectExcellenceUsefulness
Book:The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
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“A divided heart can never bring complete satisfaction. The man of mingled interests will seldom make a success of anything. If he would succeed in business he must give the major portion of his time and the best of his thought to his business.... The very same is true of the man who would be used of God, only to a far greater degree. The work alone must claim his whole attention. He has no room for other things.”

TimeWorkChristianityDevotionMinistryUsefulnessMan Of God
Author:Oswald J. Smith
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“At some point, Tracy sent me the demos for the next Static Saints album. I was knocked out, and soon became fixated on the song "Useful and Beautiful." It would likely be heard as an ode to sexual debasement, but I think it's also an invitation to root your life and your art in utility and beauty. I found myself returning endlessly to this question: How can we make Tracy's memoir more useful and more beautiful. I love that her song enacts what it extols. It reminds us that we can revel in sexual pleasure and perversity ("I've got uses, I've got bruises") while also opening up to become more expansive, more useful, and more beautiful ("Oh let me be a crashing wave. Oh let me be a secret cave.").”

ArtBeautyUsefulnessKinkArs PoeticaTrans Charisms
Book:Any Other City
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“An ever growing part of our major institutions’ functions is the cultivation and maintenance of three sets of illusions which turn the citizen into a client to be saved by experts...The first enslaving illusion is the idea that people are born to be consumers and that they can attain any of their goals by purchasing goods and services. This illusion is due to an educated blindness to the worth of use-values in the total economy. In none of the economic models serving as national guidelines is there a variable to account for non-marketable use-values any more than there is a variable for nature's perennial contribution.”

EducationEconomicsInstitutionsValueConsumerismAutonomyUsefulnessIllusions
Book:The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
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“Work done off the paid job is looked down upon if not ignored. autonomous activity threatens the employment level, generates deviance, and detracts​ from the GNP...Work no longer means the creation of a value perceived by the worker but mainly a job, which is a social relationship. Unemployment means sad idleness, rather than the freedom to do things that are useful for oneself or for one's neighbour. An active woman who runs a house and brings up children and takes in those of others is distinguished from a woman who 'works,' no matter how useless or damaging the product of this work might be.”

WorkFreedomSocietyValueEmploymentAutonomyUsefulnessGdpChildrearingGnp
Book:The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
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“When one knows that the things useless are the things most useful under different circumstances (to give one example: a little stone lazy by a stream, which becomes important when you happen to hear its sermon), he will see that the aspect of uselessness in poetry is to be doubly valued since its usefulness is always born from it like the day out of the bosom of night”

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Book:The spirit of Japanese poetry
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“But today’s society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual’s value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler’s program, that is to say, ‘mercy’ killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from conceptual confusion that in turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus and many an analytical couch.”

DignityMeaningExistentialismNihilismUsefulnessHuman Dignity
Book:Man's Search for Meaning
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“In the Middle Ages there was no salvation outside the Church, and the theologians had a hard time explaining what God did with those pagans who were visibly virtuous or saintly. Similarly, in contemporary society effort is not productive unless it is done at the behest of a boss, and economists have a hard time dealing with the obvious usefulness of people when they are outside the corporate control of a corporation, volunteer agency, or labour camp.”

EffortVirtueSocietyEconomicsProductivityTheologyEmploymentUsefulness
Book:The Right to Useful Unemployment: And Its Professional Enemies
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“I had thoroughly internalized the notion that usefulness was the only metric of whether something had value. A carabiner was useful. A multitool was useful. Schedules were useful, as were cages and bars. Tranquilizer darts were regrettable but useful. A flower could be useful but only because it might provide food or diversion for a bird or animal, not because it was beautiful. Its beauty was incidental and easily dismissed. But then Sailor arrived, and I realized that even the smallest sliver of beauty matters and can be useful. Not because it makes a difference on some cosmic level, but because it quiets our restless hearts for a moment. It whispers to us that joy is still possible.”

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Book:The Island of Last Things
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“Jeg kalder nyttige Bøger dem, som sette Boghandlere udi Activitet, som forfremme Handel, og komme deres Gryder til at kaage, ikke saadanne, der sigte alleene til forfængelig Lærdom, som Almuen, der er Landets Styrke, ikke forstaaer, og derfore gemeenligen oplægges med Boghandlernes største Skade, og ligge skimlede paa Bogladene.”

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Book:Epistler
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“Being divorced does not necessarily make one’s advice on marriage useless … or useful.”

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Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“Any student of the New Testament eager to understand its Greco-Roman setting will profit greatly from this excellent book. I commend it highly for its up-to-date perspectives and usefulness. Jeffers writes with a breadth of expertise on the Greco-Roman world that few New Testament specialists can match.”

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Author:Craig S. Keener
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“The Holy Scriptures...can alone secure to society order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability, and usefulness.....Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses and at the same time enjoy quiet conscience.”

MenGovernmentOrderCoursesStrongEnjoyJusticeHolyQuietConscienceConstitutionCourtScripturePursueSecurePurityWickedStabilityUsefulnessHoly Scriptures
Author:James McHenry
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“Our chief usefulness to humanity rests on our combining power with high purpose. Power undirected by high purpose spells calamity, and high purpose by itself is utterly useless if the power to put it into effect is lacking.”

IfsPurposeHumanityPowerEffectsChiefsUselessSpellsLackingCalamityUsefulnessCombining
Book:Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century
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“Criticism is necessary and useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger.”

MenLooksActionFightingPoorDangerHe ManOughtBattleCriticismFunctionStressMereCriticsDeedsSubstitutesIndispensableUsefulnessSubordinatesDoers
Author:Theodore Roosevelt
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